Atheists don't need to be "saved," because for them there is nothing to be saved from, no Hell to burn in after death, no pain, no sorrow, no God to be separated from, nothing.Unbeliever

Quote from: Madalyn Murray O'Hair

An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that deed must be done instead of prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated.

Quote from: Charles Bradlaugh

The atheist does not say," There is no God", but he says, "I know not what you mean by God"; the word God is to me a sound conveying no clear or distinct affirmation.

Quote from: Carl Sagan

Atheism is more than just the knowledge that gods do not exist, and that religion is either a mistake or a fraud. Atheism is an attitude, a frame of mind that looks at the world objectively, fearlessly, always trying to understand all things as a part of nature.

Quote from: Barbara Smoker

Why am I an atheist? The short answer is that I cannot accept any of the alternatives. I simply don't find them believable. As for the accusation of intellectual pride, surely the boot is on the other foot. Atheists don't claim to know anything with certainty -- it's the believers who know it all.

Quote from: Ernest Hemingway

All thinking men are atheists.

Quote from: Ernestine Rose, in [i]A Defense of Atheism[/i], 1878,

If the belief in God were natural, there would be no need to teach it. Children would possess it as well as adults, the layman as the priest, the heathen as much as the missionary. We don't have to teach the general elements of human nature--the five senses, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling. They are universal; so would religion be if it were natural, but it is not. On the contrary, it is an interesting and demonstrable fact, that all children are atheists, and were religion not inculcated into their minds they would remain so. Even as it is, they are great skeptics, until made sensible of the potent weapon by which religion has ever been propagated, namely, fear--fear of the lash of public opinion here, and of a jealous, vindictive God hereafter. No; there is no religion in human nature, nor human nature in religion. It is purely artificial, the result of education, while atheism is natural, and, were the human mind not perverted and bewildered by the mysteries and follies of superstition, would be universal.

Quote from: Paul Henri Holbach, [i]Good Sense[/i], 1772,

All children are atheists, they have no idea of God

Quote from: Pierre Bayle

It has been asserted that a moral atheist would be a monster beyond the power of nature to create: I reply, that it is not more strange for an Atheist to live virtuously, than for a Christian to abandon himself to crime. If we believe the last kind of monster, why dispute the existence of the first?

Quote from: Pierre Bayle

It is only common prejudice that induces us to believe that atheism is a fearful state.

Quote from: Daniel J. Boorstein

I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake, or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.

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Examples of atheist poetry:

From A Second Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism:

The Dying AtheistBy Anonymous

Quote

Now closed around the deepening shades of death And life with all its glory fades away,Ere long those lips will yield the expiring breath, And this worn frame be given to decay.

Such is the lot of everying that lives, From humble worm to intellectual man;Thus fades the flower that freshening fragrance gives, Thus all things end even as all things began.

'Tis folly to ignore the many links Which bind all creatures in one vast embrace,Yet human pride in righteous horror shrinks From owning kindred with the lower race.

But as from germs doth spring all life around, So man from nobler germs his being draws,With all his genius -- all his thoughts profound, He yet must yield himself to Nature's laws.

Like frailest form of life that crawls the earth, Man in his majesty must bow to fate,And 'neath that ground which giveth all things birth, Return at last to his primordial state.

So must I die, and so be laid at rest, Inanimate as though I'd ne'er had beenNo more entranced by joy, by care oppressed, A withered mass, uncomely to be seen.

But yet I'm troubled by no Christian fears, No lurid glow of hell lights up my path,I shed no craven penitential tears, Nor cry for succor from almight wrath.

No blood-polluted god awaits my soul, I would not have a god appeased by blood;What though dark seas of death before me roll, Can I not brave the depths of Jordan's flood?

Away, false fears, ye spectres of the mind, Creations of the artful priests of yore,Religion's quicksands I have left behind, To plant my footsteps on truth's rocky shore.

And as I gaze upon the sea of life, And see Death's valley far below me lie;I feel assured I leave this worldly strife, To rest in peace beneath that changeful sky.

The good I've wrought, perchance, may not bring forth, Till 'mongst the living I've long ceased to be,Then let mankind judge my humble worth, And o'er my failings pass in charity.

And you my faithful friends I leave behind, To perfect all which I have tried to do;Raise up the weak, instruct the darkened mind, Make gladness for the many--not the few.

Thus will I pass away, content in peace, Knowing my trust is placed in worthy hands;In patient labor you should never cease To spread your light aboard to distant lands.

Now I must slumber, I am old and gray, And fain would leave this scene of all my woe;My one regret, that when I'm passed away, Still struggling multitudes must come and go.

Strange darkness falls across my feeble eyes, And short and rapid comes and goes my breath;And now doth fade from view those azure skies, Good-bye to all, I yield myself to death.

Behold he sleeps,--raise up his hoary head, How calm and grave his last departing hours,E'er many days we'll lay him with the dead, And say farewell, and strew his grave with flowers.

Why Don't He Lend a Hand?Samuel P. Putnam

Quote

You say there is a GodAbove the boundless sky,A wise and wondrous deityWhose strength none can defy.You say that he is seatedUpon a throne most grand,Millions of angels at his beck . . .Why don't he lend a hand?

See how the earth is groaning,What countless tears are shed,See how the plague stalks forwardAnd brave and sweet lie dead.Homes burn and hearts are breaking,Grim murder stains the land;You say he is omnipotent . . .Why don't he lend a hand?

Behold, injustice conquers;Pain curses every hour;The good and true and beautifulAre trampled like the flower.You say he is our father,That what he wills doth stand;If he is thus almightyWhy don't he lend a hand?

What is this monarch doingUpon his golden throne,To right the wrong stupendous,Give joy instead of moan?With his resistless majesty,Each force at his command,Each law his own creation . . .Why don't he lend a hand?

Alas! I fear he's sleeping,Or is himself a dream,A bubble on thought's ocean,Our fancy's fading gleam.We look in vain to find himUpon his throne so grand,Then turn your vision earthward . . .'Tis we must lend a hand.

'Tis we must grasp the lightning,And plow the rugged soil;'Tis we must beat back suffering,And plague and murder foil;'Tis we must build the paradiseAnd bravely right the wrong;The god above us faileth,The god within is strong.

« Last Edit: April 01, 2011, 04:36:30 PM by Unbeliever »

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"Some say God is living there [in space]. I was looking around very attentively, but I did not see anyone there. I did not detect either angels or gods....I don't believe in God. I believe in man - his strength, his possibilities, his reason."Gherman Titov, Soviet cosmonaut, in The Seattle Daily Ti

The Earth was blind, but now it sees,By the light of its new-found faculties,A candle lit by those whose kneesWouldn't bend for kings nor deities.

With instrumentation we can now showWhat before we couldn't hope to know,From protons and photons to galaxies aglow,From space/time and energy to how life can grow.

We've traced our genetics to eons long past,When the new molten Earth had cooled at last,When enough CO2 had been out-gassed,When the moon first drew tides on oceans vast.

Once life struggled up from wherever it came,It kept the Earth's temp'rature nearly the same,Though the sun puts out more of its hot solar flame,We simply metabolize it like it's a game.

Mars and Venus, our neighbors, are sterile, we've found,One's too hot, one's too cold, not a bug on the ground,It's only on Earth that life moves around,Like Goldilocks here, life laid itself down.

Now we're searching throughout all celestial spaceTo discover another intelligent race,For anything there that can maybe keep pace,But we've heard not a peep, not even a trace.

Nowhere else in the universe have we yet seenA stable wet planet that's even as green,A globe with an atmospherical screen,With a chemical brew that could stir up a gene.

No gods and no aliens do we discern,We need them the less the more we can learn,Our fortunes, our fates and our lives do not turnOn whether we're saved or whether we'll burn.

Apparently then we're a planet alone,All the problems we have are solely our own,So that what we have planted is what will have grown,And what we will harvest is what we have sown.

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"Some say God is living there [in space]. I was looking around very attentively, but I did not see anyone there. I did not detect either angels or gods....I don't believe in God. I believe in man - his strength, his possibilities, his reason."Gherman Titov, Soviet cosmonaut, in The Seattle Daily Ti